E6410 Owner's Thread

There is also a diagnostics option in the BIOS. Press F12 while the BIOS screen is showing to get the option to run this.

A long POST normally only happens if the system has detected a hardware change. Check in the BIOS setup to see if there is an option to change the thoroughness of the POST. Also run the diagnostics (see above).

John

 

JR beat me to it.

 

Agreed. On paper. McAfee has something to do with the slowness.
I also eliminated Microsoft Search ... voidtools "everything" is much better.

We and Dell support agree on that too. PS/2 Keyboard Driver? Since when?
I can only imagine some piece of security software sticking its bits between the keyboard and Windows.

Already done. It's clean. Lots of steps I didn't include in the original post.

Reluctantly coming to the same conclusion.
I deal with lots of operating systems; Microsoft and its Achilles Heel (The "registry" have always seemed pointless. Designed to fail.

I don't know why, but I kept very detailed notes about all modifications to this OEM install. I don't like other people making OS choices on my behalf. I want to know what the choice was, and why I made it.

Good suggestion. I haven't gotten to that point yet. Does anyone have a pointer to the Tech Ref Manual.

Dell was going to send onsite support to install a replacement palm rest and keyboard. I didn't quite see the point of that, since the keyboard worked fine in BIOS ... and it turns out, also in "Advanced System Recovery" as a boot option.

Here's another quirk of the system that is bothering me:

I am accustomed to "tapping" the F8 key during boot, so that I can select Safe Mode. On this machine, the key presses get queued ... that's ok ... but the secondary F8 key press causes the Safe Mode menu to flash briefly, and then proceed without my selecting anything.

The same behaviour when I'm trying to use F12 to select Secondary Boot options. Press F12 at the wrong time ... it's not recognized. Press it too many time ... it skips the reboot menu and boots normally.

The clue here is to wait until "F12 Boot Options" is displayed in the upper right of the screen, and press F12 just once during the display.

No such options are given for F2 (Bios), or F8 ( Safe Mode ).

 

To each his own for anti-virus... I've been happy with F-Prot since the days of DOS. Not invasive like Norton (used to be) and McAfee and some others.

I have found the OEM install to always be suspect... system only feels stable after the user updates firmware/BIOS and performs a careful re-image. See my sig for notes and link to system manual.

I would not call Dell in until you have re-imaged and confirmed faulty hardware. If the system ran solid in the diagnostics, then that's what it will run like with a new stable image, installed with care.

The F key interrupt behavior can vary by system. Plus your keyboard hardware is suspect. I would proceed to re-image. If the system settles down, accept the F key processing as it is as long as it is serviceable.

GK

 

Would anybody agree with me that BIOS A05, A06, and A07 are slower starting up than the previous versions?

Of course I welcome the improvements, but I don't like how slow it takes just for the BIOS Dell splash screen to show upon power button press.

 

Here's the keyboard removal instructions. The most difficult bit is removing the strip of plastic at the top of the keyboard.

I haven't done timings for different BIOS versions but I agree that, overall, the boot process is longer than on my other notebooks.

John

 

I thought if you did a non-ACPI shutdown that the BIOS would perform some memory test causing a long POST? Plus having oodles of RAM doesn't help. My E6410 with 8 GB RAM did take awhile to POST.

 

I know the BIOS' are completely different, but I think you're right. My POST takes a while occasionally if the machine wasn't shut down properly.

 

Removing the plastic piece for removing the keyboard isn't that hard. Just stick your fingernail into the area to left of the Insert key and pull. It should click and a bit should pop out. Then slowly and carefully pull the rest of it out from right to left.

 

I bought the nub from Dealextreme, one for IBMs and one for Dell.
To do this I first cut off the bottom 1-2 mm of the thinkpad nub, then I cut the sides off the dell nub. The thinkpad nub is larger inside, and the dell nub bit fits inside if you cut it properly. When it's properly seated add superglue. It's probably a good idea to buy a few of each.